I’m sitting here in my office, literally, with an IRS agent. I am being audited for the first time ever.

As a small-business owner, I’ve been told that the IRS often wants to see your record keeping. Fortunately, our CFO keeps great records and is super-organized, and so, I don’t expect any issues. We also have a very “clean” policy about what we expense as a business.

What’s totally surprising, though, is how polite and thoughtful this agent is. He’s been working for 33 years at the IRS and is about to retire. And, as he went through our piles of receipts, we started to talk.

I learned about how he does a lot of volunteering in the city, mentoring young children. We swapped stories about the various neighborhoods in Brooklyn (our family arrived there when we arrived from Indonesia and lived there for 6 years). We talked about each other’s backgrounds.

I thought I’d never say this, but I actually really enjoyed meeting the IRS agent. He’s a great guy.

Funny how life works.